


Pureblood Pride (or, Coming out at Hogwarts)

by anAwfulLotofRunning



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Child Abuse References, Coming Out, Gen, Hogwarts, Homophobia, Homophobic Slurs, Internalized Homophobia, LGBT, Self-Acceptance, pure blood families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anAwfulLotofRunning/pseuds/anAwfulLotofRunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pureblood Pride is a series of one-shots about queer, pureblooded students at Hogwarts learning to accept themselves. Pansy Parkenson POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One: Drunken Truth-Telling

**Author's Note:**

> All the usual disclaimers apply. I don’t own the Harry Potter universe or any of its characters. If I did, I wouldn’t have any student loans.

 

“How long have you known?”

Draco Malfoy is staring at me, silver eyes narrowed in…what? Spite? Fear? Curiousity?

I don’t want to answer. Of course I don’t. Because it is my special truth, the truth I only ever tell in double-locked diaries and dusty attics. But my whole body is warm, tingling with adrenaline and far too much firewhiskey, and my mouth is moving, answering, before my brain can stop it.

“Eight months, exactly,” I accidentally reply.

He lets out a long whistle, but doesn’t stop staring. “Eight months. Shit, Pansy.”

“Shut it, Dragon Breath. You’re a great big prat for prying when I’m sloshed, you know.”

“We’re purebloods, remember?” he softly jokes. “Purebloods are never prats. Only proper, cultured snobs.”

His gentle tone loosens some of the tension in my chest. He hasn’t thrown me off the astronomy tower yet, even after hearing my deepest darkest secret, so maybe I’ll survive the night after all.

I still don’t want to talk about it, but truth be told, I have no where else to go. Two hours ago I made the mistake of telling Millie–-after all, if anyone else in Slytherin were queer, wouldn’t it be her?-–and she didn’t take it so well. I blacked out after the first two punches, and woke up just as she was telling our entire dorm room, in a voice that held a million threats.

I split before she could hit me again-–this time with the support of our entire dorm. The girls who used to be my friends.

So I’m here, stranded on top of the astronomy tower. Literally on top, where no one can see me, because no one else is crazy enough to climb up.

Except for Draco bloody Malfoy, who must have wanted to escape from the dorm as badly as I did.

“Wait,” I ask, suddenly suspicious. “Why are you out here? And how did you even find this place? Only the desperate and reckless climb this high.”

I see his whole frame snap to attention, stiff and guarded, and he turns his shoulders sharply away from me. I’ve never seen him look so rattled.

“Was it a rough weekend at home?” I ask, suddenly understanding. It was the Sunday after Easter hols, which meant that most of us had been home this weekend. I’m guessing that Draco’s weekend didn’t go quite as planned.

He nods, stiffly, and starts rubbing his hands along his crossed arms. It’s not even cold outside.

This is Draco, and he’s a professional prat, so I don’t really care how he’s handling things. But we’re stuck together on a turret roof, so I figure that I’d better say something.

“Uh…” I begin awkwardly. “Do you, ah, want to talk about it? Or something?”

He shakes his head in a tiny, violent motion, and then explodes all at once. “It’s that bloody Granger!” he shouts, out into the night. “That fucking mudblood has to beat us all in every class. I can’t even cheat well enough to beat her, and my father practically owns this school!”

I laugh, a little. “Yeah he does. And Granger really is a bitch. The rest of us have never had a chance. So what, though? I’m doing way worse than you.”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice laced with fury, “but you’re just a Parkenson. No one expects you to be top of anything.”

“Hey!” I yelp, indignant. I punch his arm with drunken grace. Who the hell does he think he is?

Draco yelps and jerks away, scrambling across the tiny roof. Then he cradles his arm possessively, glaring at me like a wounded animal. What the heck? I think. I can’t be strong enough to actually hurt him.

And then it hits me, hard, like another one of Millie’s blows. Draco gets hit when he’s not good enough. I bet Lucius roughs him up with that awful cane he always carries. And I bet the bastard justifies himself and then sleeps soundly at night. He tells himself he’s just following tradition. Holding up the old ways, keeping his precious progeny in line.

The proper pureblood thing to do.

I suddenly feel both sick and ashamed. “I’m sorry,” I whisper quietly, wondering if he’ll know what I mean.

He probably doesn’t want to talk about it–Pureblood pride, and all–but I feel like I need to say something. Need to let him know that someone else in the world knows, and maybe cares, even though we haven’t been friends now for a very long time.

I stare at the grounds, far below, watching a little thestral herd tear apart Hagrid’s garden. Next to me, Draco leans back against the slant of the roof, breathing hard as he stares up at the clouded Scotland sky.

I finally break the silence with simple words, extended like a truce. “Will you keep my secret?”

He nods, sitting up and looking me this time, silver eyes straight into mine. “Of course."

A simple, quiet promise.

 _I'll keep yours too_ I think to myself.

~

Next day in the hallway, I casually shake Draco’s hand and slip him my grandmother’s healing amulet. It’s an amethyst charm on a long silver chain.

“For warding off werewolves,” I say with a grin.

He looks flustered, and confused, and then hurries off without answering.

I know it will help him sleep tonight. The amethyst charm glows warm against your skin when it’s working to heal you, and the heat comes and goes like ocean waves. When I was sick, as a kid, it was the only thing that helped me rest.

I wonder if he’ll realize that it’s my quiet response to the things he didn’t mean to share. My way of saying that I believe him, that I don’t blame him, that he deserves to get some help.

He avoids my gaze the rest of the day.

~

The next morning, at the breakfast table, I find a parcel next to my usual seat. It’s small and carefully wrapped in silver and green. Inside I’m surprised to find treacle tart. It’s my favorite candy, and one that I haven’t had since I was a kid.

A memory blows through my mind, quick as countryside seen from a train. It’s of a much younger me with a much younger Draco.

It was a cold winter day, and my dad was lecturing us about abandoning decorum. Draco and I were covered in mud, because we had snuck outside and slid across the frozen mud puddles littering the grounds. We had both managed to rip our clothes, and apparently this amounted to a travesty.

So we were sent to the sitting room, which back then was a punishment. It was all boring books and stuffy furniture, and never a toy or game in sight.

But then I remember that Dobby showed up. He was our favorite house elf, because he always brought me and Draco surprises when we needed help. So there was Dobby, as usual, with his elfish sixth sense, carrying a tray of steaming cocoa and warm, sticky treacle tart. I remember that it was fresh from the oven, and that it stuck to our tongues and lips and teeth every time we tried to take a bite.

So we both ended up with mouths full of toffee, furiously trying to chew and not choke, and then Dobby challenged us to sing a song. “Young masters must make merry!” he insisted. “Yule tide time is almost here!”

So we sang, I remember, and it came out like the garbled yelps of kneezle kittens. Then we laughed so hard that we almost choked on the toffee, and I think I ended up with hot cocoa in my nose.

In my mind I see Draco, young and mud-covered and throwing his face back in a fit of toffee-filled laughter. And in front of me I see a tiny box of treacle tart, wrapped with Draco’s signature precision.

Maybe we’ll both be okay after all.


	2. Part 2: The Treehouse

The room of requirement is a handy thing.

I haven’t set foot in the Slytherin dorms since the night that Millicent Bulstrode knocked me in the jaw. I don’t know if I’m more scared of her hitting me again, or of having to face the suspicious glances and accusing stares of the rest of my dorm mates. Four years I’ve lived with those girls, studied with them, gossiped with them, and now they won’t even look at me in the halls. Millicent still cracks her knuckles every time I walk by, and I have gotten several anonymous threat letters delivered by school owls during meals. That means the letters, and the threats, came from inside the school. From inside my own dorm.

We’re only supposed to treat outsiders this way. Never each other. In Slytherin house, we care for our own, according to Professor Snape.

Professor Snape is another problem. He’s gone for two weeks at a potions summit in America, which means that Eric Zabini and Kayleigh Knott, the seventh year prefects, are in charge of the Slytherin dorms. To be honest, I don’t know whether my head of house would help me out in this situation—side with a gay kid against the rest of the house–or whether he would agree with my dormmates and exile me to Gryffindor.

But I know for a fact that Zabini and Knott will exile me to the bottom of the lake if they ever find out.

I am safe for now, as long as I keep to common areas. Slytherins never fight with our own in front of outsiders, so I’m safe at meals and classes and whatnot. I just can’t go near the Slytherin dungeons, because behind closed doors, all bets are off.

Thus, the room of Requirement.

All in all, things could be worse. The Room grants you wishes, just like a genie. Which means that I am surrounded by soaring piles of old books–magically transported from the Hogwarts library–and studying art history in a posh little tree house. I’m not sure how the Room managed to plant a tree and furnish a house on such short notice, but I’m not complaining.

On the other side of the room is a plush four-poster, double sized and curtained in richest green. Then there’s my trunk, which Dobby fetched for me from the Slytherin dorms, and a nice little vanity table with a round, silver-framed mirror.

Today was the first time I’d seen Dobby since the treacle tart day. Draco and I had stopped playing together shortly after that. Politics or some such thing. But Dobby still seems to have the knack for turning up when I need him most.

I throw aside a gigantic book full of paintings from the Louve and search through the next pile until I find what I’m looking for.

“Aha!” I say, outloud, and suddenly Dobby pops into the treehouse, landing right on top of a tall, precarious pile. It topples right over, and he climbs out of the rubble moaning, ears deflated in shame.

“Oh young miss, Dobby is most sorry! Only, he was coming in a jiffy because you might be needing something!”

I laugh, just a bit. Elves are just servant creatures, of course, but at the moment I’ll take all the company I can get. “I wasn’t calling for help, but come to think of it, I could use a midnight snack. Would you mind popping down to the kitchens for me?”

Dobby bows low to the ground, and I see for the first time that he is covered like a coat rack with random, brightly colored clothing scraps.

“Is that a hat you’ve got there?” I ask, gesturing towards the colored mess atop his head and hazarding a guess.

His round eyes grow wide, and he straightens his posture. “Oh yes, young miss! Dobby is being given them by young miss Granger.”

“Bitch,” I mutter, under my breath. “I heard she’s on some stupid crusade to free the house elves or something. Doesn’t she know better? Fucking mudblood.”

Dobby glares at me, reproachfully, and then disappears from the room with a loud crack. I go back to my books.

~

“AAAAAAHHHHHHH.”

I’m immersed in Gardner’s Art Through the Ages when I hear a high pitched shriek followed by the loud thwack of a body hitting the ground.

I peer out from my treehouse nervously. “Draco?”

“No it’s Daphne,” a girl’s voice calls. “Could you let me out of this, please?”

I climb down and find my dormmate, Daphne Greengrass, stuck flat to the floor like a fly on tape.  I smirk a bit, glad to see that my sticking charm boobytrap kicks ass.

“Tell me how you got in here first,” I say, coolly. “And why you came. You haven’t spoken to me in days.”

“Draco sent me.” She wheezes. Half of her face is stuck to the floor, so her words come out all garbled and funny.

Hm. She could be telling the truth. I decide to goad her a bit to see. “So you’re the girl he’s screwing these days? Your parents must be proud, their daughter bagging a Malfoy and all.”

She glares at me with clear green eyes, then juts her chin up in a familiar gesture of wounded dignity. “Treacle tart, bitch.” She enunciates each word with sharp precision. “Can I get up now?”

So he did send her. Interesting. In one quick motion I cast expelliarmus, catch her wand, and cancel the sticking spell that had her pinned to the floor. She scoffs and glares as she gets to her feet.

I stand ten feet away, and start twirling her wand slowly in one hand. I secretly hope that I look either hot, or menacing.“What do you want, Greengrass?”

She holds out her hands, palms spread wide. The sign of surrender. “I just want to talk. That’s it. Draco was too much of a wuss to come himself, so he sent me to do it.”

This piques my interest. “To do what?”

She starts to answer, but at that moment Dobby pops back into the room, carrying a tray of pumpkin pasties. He bows respectfully towards Daphne, glares at me, and then pops back out of existence.

As I take a pasty and start to chew, ignoring Daphne, I wonder if she is dangerous. Then I realize that I am just too tired to care at the moment. Too tired to fight, too tired to defend. At this moment, this girl who used to be my friend is either going to accept me or she isn’t.

A plush green chair appears behind me and I sink into it, gratefully. Then I throw Daphne’s wand towards her, almost missing. It’s my version of a truce. “So what does Dragon face have to say?”

She takes a seat too, on a hearth rug that appears next to a newly made fireplace. “He thinks that you should tell Professor Snape what happened.”

“That Millicent bruised my face with one blow?” I ask.

“Well, that, yeah. But Draco also said that you should tell him why.”

“Snape?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell him that I’m gay?”

“Yeah.”

I laugh, feeling lightheaded and sort of ridiculous now. The bedtime tea we’re drinking must have started to take effect. “Professor Snape, head of the revered house of Salizar Slythern, is NOT historically known for his tolerance of students.”

“Yeah, well, he is a bit terrifying sometimes,” she agrees. “But I think he would take your side on this one. Maybe even expel Millie for being a bigot.”

I glance at her sideways, studying her face. Her eyes are unwavering, and her voice is steady. She sounds sincere.

“What makes you think that?”

“Because Snape is gay too.”

“What?” I ask, completely surprised. I almost choke on my mouthful of pasty.

I’m not sure that I heard correctly. Slytherins, like purebloods, are never gay. Especially ones who are rumored to carry the honor of the dark mark. “Professor Snape is a poof?”

She shrugs. “It’s not like it’s something I’ve ever spent time thinking about, or anything. But Draco knows him pretty well, and he says that it’s true.”

Hm. I let the silence stretch, thinking. “Well, even if Snape could help me right now, he’s not in the country.”

“Yeah, Draco said that too. But he said that you could ask the headmaster to send him a patronus. Those carry messages way faster than an owl.”

I pull my knees up to my chest, and let my head fall into my hands. “What if Dumbledore expels me though. For being gay, I mean?”

At this, Daphne Greengrass starts to laugh. Not a lady like chuckle, but full on, tea-out-your-nose, head-thrown-back kind of laughter. It even makes me smile a bit.

“What’s the joke, Daph?” I ask, confused. It feels good to call someone a nickname, again. To have someone beside Draco sit next to me and talk to me like I’m still human.

It takes her a good long minute to calm down, and her eyes are red and streaming before she finally replies, “I don’t know how on earth you’ve never noticed, but Albus Dumbledore is about as gay as they come.”

As soon as she says it, the headmaster’s wardrobe flashes before my eyes. Memories of the distinguished old man decked out in magenta, teal, purple you name it. And suddenly I am laughing too. This gets Daphne going again, and we both lean back against the cushions and shake until we can’t breathe.

Maybe Daphne isn’t so bad after all.

~


End file.
